Immigrants embrace at the Greyhound bus station before departing to various U.S. destinations on July 25 in McAllen, Texas. / John Moore, Getty Images

by Jolie Lee, USA TODAY Network

by Jolie Lee, USA TODAY Network

A California school district is hiring an unaccompanied minors consultant to work with the unprecedented number of immigrant children arriving from Central America in the past year.

Oakland Unified School District posted a job opening this month for a "support services consultant" to help unaccompanied immigrant students find legal help, as well as counseling, health and educational services.

These students need extra assistance finding services because they don't have refugee status that would give them access to a social worker, food stamps or Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program, said Carmelita Reyes, principal at Oakland International High School.

"In the same way there are school specialists who deal with foster youth or refugees, we need a specialist who tracks these kids," Reyes said.

San Francisco is also "exploring" a similar position to serve unaccompanied immigrant children, said Christina Wong, special assistant to the superintendent at San Francisco Unified School District.

Since last fall, as many as 50,000 unaccompanied children from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have come to the USA, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The number of unaccompanied minors represents a small fraction of the overall U.S. student population - about one-tenth of 1% of the 50.1 million public school students, according to 2013 Department of Education figures.

But in districts like Oakland, the effects can be felt more deeply, especially at certain schools where unaccompanied minor students are concentrated.

Oakland's school district, which has 37,000 K-12 students, enrolled 150 unaccompanied students since June 2013. Fifty are enrolled at Oakland International High School, representing one-eighth of the population at that school, said Nate Dunstan, a specialist with the school district's Refugee and Asylum Program.

The first step for the consultant would be to help unaccompanied immigrant students find legal help. A number of organizations in the Bay Area offer services for free or on a sliding scale, but oftentimes the students and their sponsors don't know about these services, Dunstan said.

"We found a lot of students with an older sibling that can barely take care of themselves, let alone a couple of younger siblings," Dunstan said.

In the meantime, school administrators and teachers have taken on this consulting role.

"We are trying to help, but honestly, that's not our job," Reyes said.

Oakland International High School is part of the International Network for Public Schools, 17 high schools in California, New York and Virginia that serve immigrant newcomers.

The organization's executive director, Claire Sylvan, said schools are a natural place to connect immigrant students with services in the broader community.

"Handing a kid a piece of paper may not result in them going somewhere," Sylvan said.

Oakland's school district aims to hire someone by mid-September. The consultant will have to first prioritize the students who will age out of the school system or face upcoming court dates.

The position, funded through foundation grants, is for one year, but many of the upcoming hearings are not scheduled until 2015, Dunstan said.

"It's hard to imagine, with the number of kids arriving now, that the need (for this position) will go away within one year," Dunstan said.